There’s something about a frosty morning that inspires me to turn my oven on and get busy roasting and baking. An apple pie seems the perfect quick project to accomplish three tasks – warm up a cool kitchen, fragrance a cozy home and use up the last of those damn apples now that my box of citrus is filling my fruit crisper.

I really am not much of a baker because I have a tendency to wing it, something that can result in disaster when it comes to baking. Pie, though? Please! Pie is a crust or two and some filling – easy, peasy as the phrase goes. I peeled 7 apples and sliced them and then tossed them in a bowl with maybe 1/2 cup of sugar, 1/3 cup of brown sugar, a couple of tablespoons of flour (this helps the juices tighten up) and a bit of cinnamon and ground ginger. (Confession: I use pre-made pie crusts. Sorry, but I’m just not into making pie crust and my family isn’t discerning enough to complain.) I unrolled a crust into my favorite deep pie dish, loaded it with my apple mixture and topped it with a second crust. My crimping skills leave much to be desired, but here’s how it looked before hitting the oven for 50 minutes at 375 degrees:

I intended to take a picture of the finished product, but when you live with teenagers it is a challenge to photograph baked goods before they’ve been compromised by ravenous boys. The photo below is the best I could do.

It’s fruit and milk, right?

I’d like to publicly thank Griffin for indulging me by making that serving of pie a la mode the second course of his Sunday morning breakfast all for the sake of my Delso readers. What a guy!